A Father's Return
by Lawless67
Summary: The burdens born by his sons in his absence have not left them unmarked. Bruce stands guard over his children and reflects.


A/N: This is my first Batman fic, so I'm a little nervous. I've always loved the characters, and watched many of the various television versions of them when I was a child. I only recently got into the comics, so I hope I have an adequate grasp of the characters. No doubt this is schmoop, but I wanted all of them to be at peace with each other for once. Unfortunately, this resulted in most of them being unconscious, but oh well. Takes place after Bruce's return from his supposed death. Please read and review. Enjoy.

There are four children upstairs that he has no idea what to do with.

Of course, he uses the term child loosely—two of them haven't lived in this house for years, and another is bare months away from the freeing age of eighteen. But they are still _his_ children—no matter that he's been gone for so long, no matter that the youngest is practically a stranger to him, no matter that each and every one of them has known more pain than any adult—so he considers himself entitled to use the word as he wishes.

The big foyer of the manor is strange and forbidding around him, and he finds the extravagance of his surroundings suit him more ill than ever. He doesn't know where Alfred is, no doubt he's lurking somewhere close by, waiting to force more nourishment into the too-thin body of his eldest charge. But the presence of his sons weighs on him, pressing constantly against his consciousness and drawing him up the cold marble stairs, and away from the festering isolation of his self-reflection, with a near magnetic pull.

His own bedroom is the first he passes—the first defense against any intruders meaning harm to the other rooms' inhabitants. He avoids the entrance with carefully measured steps, having already been inside once today. His former living space had been preserved with the careful morbidity of a shrine. The bed was made with pristine white sheets, the furniture all meticulously free of dust, curtains drawn to let in the barest sliver of light. But the pictures he'd kept on the nightstand were gone, removed as a too-painful reminder or snatched by the deft fingers of his grieving family, to be held close within the privacy of one of the other rooms down the hall. Despite the care, the cleanliness, the room still had the stale, lifeless feeling of a tomb.

He supposed he couldn't blame them. After all, he'd left no body to be ensconced in a real grave.

He moves past, discarding painful thoughts of what his broken family has suffered thus far. He resolves to remedy the hollow feeling to this house no later than tomorrow. He's back now, and there's no reason his children should be continuously reminded of how close their once invincible father came to death.

In the dim confines of the hallway, he nearly stumbles over the prone body of his second son.

Jason sleeps sprawled across the open doorway of Dick's room, either too afraid of rejection or too proud—or both—to set foot inside. He's curled on his left side, back to the room, unconsciously adding yet another barrier between his sleeping brothers and the terrifying vastness of the world. His right arm is draped across his ribs, likely protecting the ever-present bruises gained in the line of duty. The rest of his long limbs are strewn carelessly, and Bruce feels a faint pang at how much he's grown over the years—a far cry from the scrawny, malnourished eleven-year-old he first knew. Jason is the tallest of them now, to Dick's everlasting chagrin, almost exactly on level with Bruce's own height. He's still too thin, though. They all are, as a result of a hard year.

Jason's head rests on his outstretched left arm, black locks with their streak of shocking white tumbled over the pale forehead. Bruce kneels to brush aside the errant stands, longer than Jason usually keeps them. His face holds the sweet blankness of peaceful sleep, undisturbed by even a twitch of the eyelids. Black lashes are swept down, echoing the dark smudges of many sleepless nights on the boy's cheeks. It's been over a year since Bruce last studied that precious face, and he can see the changes time has wrought. The sharply carved bones are more pronounced than ever—the face no less handsome for it—and manhood has marked the smooth skin with stubble, black in the darkness, though Bruce knows it will glint auburn in the sunlight. He can't pinpoint the exact moment his son transitioned from the child he knew to a man, if ever there was one, but Jason is full grown now. Despite it, he looks impossibly young, and Bruce is reminded that he is still only two months past twenty-one. Barely old enough to drink legally, and he's seen and lived enough hurt for ten lifetimes.

Bruce doesn't know what occurred between his sons in his absence, but the fact that Jason is even willing to stay the night in the manor speaks volumes. That he's here, sleeping the righteous, untouched sleep of a small child—even if unwilling to completely join his brothers—makes Bruce's heart swell with a hope it hasn't felt in years.

Registering the slight shiver of the long body, Bruce shrugs out of the jacket Alfred had stuffed him into this morning and settles it across his son's shoulders. His hand rests a moment longer on the dark crown of hair, a benediction, before he rises and carefully steps over Jason's boneless form.

He crosses the threshold of Dick's room and finds his three remaining sons, the sight squeezing his heart in an aching sort of joy.

Tim, book on his chest, is curled in a nest of discarded pillows and blankets on the floor at the end of the big bed, very carefully out of range of both Damian's small kicking feet and Dick's tendency to cuddle—or strangle—those he sleeps with. Even in sleep, Tim is ever the strategist. Bruce frowns as he studies his third son. The adversities of the last year seem to have hit Tim the hardest, physically, at least. The teen had never been big, but now he seems so small as to be delicate. Bruce has a brief remembrance of the tiny child he first knew, all spindly limbs and bird-light bones and too big eyes. Over the years as Robin, the boy had put on weight, all muscle, but retained the small stature inherited from his petite mother. Now, at just past seventeen, Tim skims just a couple inches short of six feet and possesses the slender, almost fragile frame of a teenager living on too little sleep and under the burden of too many worries.

_He looks sick, _Bruce realizes with a familiar jolt of the ever-present guilt. Tim's skin is too pale, his face gaunt and haggard despite the blissful expression it wears in sleep. His limbs are starting to take on a gangling look, wrists and knobby knees extending from worn clothing, though before Tim's fine bones have never been anything but elegant. The first thing Bruce is going to speak to his children about is their collective health. He's appalled at the lack of care his sons have given to their own welfare.

_Your fault, your fault, _that pervasive voice inside him whispers. He pushes it firmly away in spite of the sharp twinge in his heart that attests to its truth.

There are dark smudges under Tim's closed eyes, too. Almost single-handedly finding a missing father is not easy work.

Bruce removes the worn copy of _To Kill a Mockingbird _from his son's slack grip, painstakingly marking the page before setting the book aside. Tim's neck lies at an awkward angle sure to cause pain tomorrow, and Bruce adjusts his pillow. Tim's skull is a fragile weight in his large hand, baby fine dark hair soft his palm. He strokes a calloused thumb across his son's temple, the warm exhalation of the teen's breath a comforting presence against his hand. The boy made as comfortable as he can be while simultaneously twisted like a pretzel, Bruce straightens the jumbled afghan, pulling it up to the boy's chin, and stands.

The last two slumber on in the big bed.

They are so tangled together that it's hard to tell where one ends and the other begins.

Dick faces the door, so wrapped around Damian that not much of the child is visible—a fuzz of thick black hair, one small foot, the sock slipped half off, the soft curve of a cheek. The top of his head is tucked under Dick's chin, and Bruce can only see the left half of his face. The roundness of childhood has not yet completely deserted it, though Bruce knows the boy's eleventh birthday has come and gone during his absence. The skin is olive-toned, just a couple shades darker than his own, the lashes long and almost girlish against that smooth skin. His brows are slightly winged like Bruce's, and there's a broadness to the sharp cheekbones that reveals his paternity. The tips of his ears are flushed red with sleep. The chin is set stubbornly, even in unconsciousness, though the imperious sneer the child wears so often is gone. He is more attractive for its absence.

In spite of the fact that, two hours ago, Damian was heard threatening dismemberment to his eldest brother if ever Dick dared to touch him again, the boy's hands are curled in the fabric of Dick's shirt. Damian is nearly swallowed by an old gray sweatshirt with _Bludhaven Police Department _emblazoned on the chest. Bruce recognizes the flannel pajama pants he wears underneath as a long-outgrown pair of Jason's. One leg is trapped between both of Dick's, and the other kicks restlessly, loose sock flailing. Bruce catches it gently in both hands and tugs the wayward sock back into place before tucking it beneath Dick's knees.

Damian situated, Bruce turns his gaze to his eldest son.

Dick wears only a pair of ratty gray sweatpants, the match to the sweatshirt Damian wears, Bruce guesses, and a thin t-shirt so old as to be nearly transparent. Damian's restlessness has rucked the shirt so that it lies halfway up Dick's stomach. What skin Bruce can see is marked with Bruce's failures—the faint yellowing of bruises here, the puckered scar of a healed bullet wound there. Despite his lack of clothing, and the fact that he and Damian have kicked all the covers down to be absorbed into the third robin's nest, Dick doesn't seem cold. Bruce recalls a small trembling body that often crawled into bed with him when the nightmares became too much to bear, and how the small figure radiated heat like a miniature furnace.

Some things haven't changed, Bruce thinks with a smile as Damian burrows closer into his elder brother's warmth.

Dick is wrapped like a vise around the littlest bird, arms banded around Damian's back, body curved to most effectively shield his brother. His chin rests on Damian's head, face tilted towards the open door and any threat that might appear. The relaxed expression on Dick's face, though, belies the fierceness of his posture.

The straight black hair is shorter than he used to keep it, better to fit the cowl he'd taken up in Bruce's absence. It still falls over his forehead and around his ears. Dick has perhaps changed the least, physically, over the last year. He was already a man in his own right when Batman lost the battle to Darkseid and Bruce lost his sons. The features on the dear face are as familiar to Bruce as his own, but time has wrought little changes he notices now.

There's a tiny, straight scar, faded and pink, at the left corner of the finely shaped mouth that hadn't been there before. The chin is set firmly, and he thinks that it is perhaps not himself that Damian has inherited his tenacity from. The knife-edged nose is still perfectly straight despite years of crime fighting, only the most miniscule of bumps in the bridge to show where it's been broken before. Dick's skin has that dusky tint, though he's paler than usual—a result of dwelling so much in the dark. Dark lashes sweep sharp, almost hollow cheeks, and there are tiny lines around the slightly slanted cat eyes.

Dick looks both too young and too old at once, a consequence of becoming the head—the backbone, the shoulders bearing the weight—of an impossibly difficult family at the tender age of twenty-six.

For that, Bruce is sorrier than any of them will ever know.

He glances up from his reverie to find a pair of very blue eyes watching him.

Dick's eyes are glazed, and he blinks sleepily, Damian still clutched tight in his arms.

"Are you real?" he asks bluntly. Bruce inhales sharply. His voice holds no anger, no fear, only the bone-deep weariness that indicates this is not the first time he's dreamed of a father who wasn't there.

Whatever is left of Bruce's heart beneath all the scars is broken now. He's surprised the snap of it isn't audible. But then, Dick has always been able to do this to him—they all have, in their own ways—to crack his façade of uncaring in two with just a few simple words.

The silence is stretching too long. He needs to say something. Just as the faint spark of hope begins to dim in Dick's eyes, he answers.

"Yes, Dickie," his voice is rusty, but Dick's gaze fastens on him with an exhausted intensity that is unnerving. "I'm here."

They are both silent for a few moments. Then Dick nods, chin brushing up and down against the crown of Damian's head.

"Okay." With that, he closes his eyes once more and lets out a soft sigh that ruffles the dark fluff of his brother's hair.

Bruce deflates as if some terrible weight has been taken from his shoulders. Dick has slipped gently back into sleep, joining his brothers once more. Only the desk lamp still burns, and in its light, Bruce retrieves the battered copy of Harper Lee's beloved novel and settles into the desk's single chair.

With the comfort of the soft light gilding the quietness of his sleeping children's faces, and the deep, even sound of their breathing all around him, Bruce begins to read.

_His hands were under my chin, pulling up the cover, tucking it around me. "Most people are, Scout, when you finally see them." He turned out the light and went into Jem's room. He would be there all night, and he would be there when Jem waked up in the morning. _

He is home, and all is well with the world.


End file.
